


Paper Patience

by isabeau25



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 05:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13093641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabeau25/pseuds/isabeau25
Summary: Someone is making paper flowers for Pidge, and it takes her a while to figure out why. *Takes place during the beginning of season 3, while Shiro is still missing.*





	Paper Patience

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot to post this one here! From a prompt for my 100 follower celebration over on [Quill and Sword](http://swordandquill.tumblr.com/). The prompt was _Asters (patience, love of variety, elegance and daintiness)_ from [browntiger15](http://browntiger15.tumblr.com).

Pidge yelled and threw the tracker across the hanger. It didn’t make it far enough to hit the wall, and that only made her more angry. She kicked her workbench, and when that didn’t help, she threw her wrench in the same direction as the tracker.

Nothing was working. She had tried 48 different configurations, and nothing was working. The tracker was their best chance for finding Matt and her dad, and maybe Shiro too, but she just couldn’t make it work.

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she scrubbed angrily at them with her sleeve. She felt like she wasn’t making any progress at all, and everyone was counting on her, not just the team, but her dad and brother, and her mom too, to bring everyone home safely. She just didn’t know what to do anymore.

The impulse to hit something was too strong for her to ignore, and she snapped up her bayard and stomped off to the training deck.

* * *

Electrocuting drones had made Pidge feel a little better, and she had come up with another two configurations she could try. Provided she hadn’t broken too much throwing the tracker.

She was surprised to find it not on the floor half way across the hanger, but sitting on her workbench with a paper flower sitting on top of it. She picked the flower up with a frown. It was pretty, neatly folded and a cheerful purple.

Maybe it was from Lance; he was kind of crafty, or Hunk; he was always messing with her stuff. It was obviously a gesture meant to make her feel better, and she appreciated it. She set it in one of the cups she used to hold small tools and got back to work. It was kind of an odd gift, but it was nice to know the team was trying to cheer her up.

Pidge pulled out her screw driver and got back to work on the tracker.

* * *

Pidge had always been the smallest. She had skipped ahead three grades in school, and sometimes still been bored, with the added benefit of being the shortest person in the room. She was certainly the smallest one on the team. Mostly it didn’t bother her. She was fast and agile, and most of the time smart enough to deal with any disadvantages that being small brought.

Sometimes though, sometimes she just wished she was bigger.

“Lance is down,” Pidge called into her comm, “I dragged him into a side passage, but I don’t think I can get him back to the lions.”

“We have a lock on your location,” Keith sounded surprisingly calm, “We’ll be there in three dobashes.”

Keith was getting better. The first few times someone had gotten hurt after he had taken over as team lead, he had panicked. He had still held everything together, but he had been visibly freaked out.

It would have been a lot better if they hadn’t had to come and get them though. If it had been anyone else on the team, they could have just carried Lance out. It usually didn’t bother Pidge being small, but suddenly she had a friend’s life in jeopardy because she wasn’t big enough, and she really didn’t like it.

There wasn’t anything she could do about it though, so she hunkered down to protect Lance and wait.

* * *

Pidge spent the first two hours Lance was in the pod in the gym working out. She knew it was kind of stupid, and she needed to work on building more than muscle mass to solve the problem, but the need to do something to vent her frustration was too strong to ignore.

She probably needed a tech solution, and usually she liked that better, but she felt like she should be able to do this without ‘cheating’ using tech. She should be able to protect her friends.

She wasn’t feeling much better by the time she dragged herself to the showers, then to her room.

When she got there, there was a paper flower sitting on her pillow. The paper had some kind of pattern on it, stars or tiny flowers, she couldn’t tell. She flopped down on her bed and held the flower over her head, studying it thoughtfully.

It wasn’t Lance. Maybe Alteans had some kind of origami-like thing they could do, although the flower looked kind of like an earth flower to her. She couldn’t be sure, but maybe she would ask Allura about it later. It was nice, whoever had left it for her. It made her feel like she hadn’t done so bad after all.

She set the flower on her nightstand and picked up her tablet, opening up her design program. If she could build robots that floated, there was no reason she couldn’t build something to make her teammates float.

* * *

It became a pattern after that. Pidge would get upset or something frustrating would happen, and she would find a folded flower somewhere nearby. She wasn’t sure who was leaving them, but they were a nice reminder that her team supported her and cared about her. She kept most of them in a cup next to her bed, but she had a few tucked into the tool holders on her workbench.

The mystery finally revealed itself at a point where she was feeling an awful lot like she didn’t deserve any flowers. She had lost her temper with Keith while they were on a mission. It wasn’t really his fault. She had wanted more time with the Galra ship’s databases, but Keith had pulled them out, saying the risk was too high. She felt like she might be losing the chance to find her dad and brother. She knew the chance of the info she needed being there was slim, but there was a chance, and she had been so angry at being dragged away. She had screamed at Keith from Green’s cockpit, screamed that he didn’t understand, and she had to have that data. Then she had snapped at Hunk and Lance when they tried to calm her down.

Now she felt terrible about it. Keith had been right, and they only would have been captured if they had stayed. She needed to go apologize to him, and probably to Hunk and Lance too.

She just wanted to wallow for a while first though.

She opened the door to her room and was more than a little surprised to find Keith there, paper flower in hand, about to set it on her pillow.

“Um… hi,” he said awkwardly, bringing the flower back to hold against his chest.

“It was you,” Pidge was thoroughly surprised; Keith hadn’t really struck her as the crafty type.

“Yeah,” Keith scratched the back of his head, “I’ll stop if…”

“I like them,” Pidge shook her head quickly, “they’re pretty.”

“They’re asters,” Keith held it out to her, “Shiro showed me how to make them.”

“Yeah?” Pidge took the flower and sat on the bed, patting the space next to her.

“You know how Shiro is always saying ‘patience yields focus’?” Keith slumped beside her; talking about Shiro was still hard for him.

“Yeah,” Pidge nodded, “I thought about making a bumper sticker or something with that on it and sticking it on Black.”

Keith snorted, his shoulders relaxing a little, “he used to tell it to me a lot, especially when I was having trouble in school or with people. Sometimes it wasn’t enough though, so he taught me how to make asters. It gave me something to do besides brood.”

“Why asters?” Pidge held the one in her hand up; it was white, and the paper had a pearly sheen to it.

“Asters for patience,” Keith looked away, “he said at least I’d have some way to get patience that would work for sure when nothing else did.”

Pidge giggles and leaned against his shoulder, “that sounds like Shiro.”

“I know it’s hard when things aren’t going as fast as you want, or working out the way you think they should,” Keith looked down at his hands, “I thought maybe you would like some patience too.”

“You’re a dork,” Pidge slid her arm through Keith’s and rested her head on his shoulder, “I’ll take all the patience I can get though.”

“Yeah, me too,” Keith leaned his cheek against her hair.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Pidge twisted the flower in her hand, “you were right.”

“It’s okay,” Keith shrugged, “I yell too when I’m frustrated.”

“So we both need patience sometimes,” Pidge concluded, then held the flower out in front of them, “teach me how to make them?”

“Yeah,” Keith nodded, “I’d like that.”

* * *

The next time Keith got into an argument with one of their teammates, he came back to his room to find a red aster sitting on his bed, and he smiled.

 


End file.
